That’s how contractors were described by Ernest Delbuono, senior vice president and chair of the crisis practice at D.C. strategic communications firm Levick in 2013. And the description was thanks in large part to Edward Snowden.

Indeed, even as much of the nation debated whether Snowden was a patriot or a traitor, a big portion of the Washington business community struggled to respond to the subsequent mess that ensued. That’s less because of what he revealed — classified information about secret surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency — and more because of where he worked. Snowden was an employee for Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. for only three months before his big reveal, using his position (and security clearance) to gain access to computer systems and data that he then shared with a number of media outlets.

Some scathing media reports followed: “Snowden case not the first embarrassment for Booz Allen, or D.C. contracting community” was the headline of a Washington Post article published just a few weeks after a cover story from Bloomberg Businessweek proclaiming Booz Allen “the company that spies on America.”

Whether that hit Booz Allen’s bottom line is hard to say. In the immediate aftermath of the Snowden leak, the company’s stock price dropped 4.5 percent, though its rebounded since. CEO Ralph Shrader emerged to defend its reputation, telling employees and analysts that Snowden “was on our payroll but was not a Booz Allen person and did not share our values,” and that “we cannot and will not let him define us.”

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